From the outside they look like tough bikers, dressed in leather vests and boots and bandanas.

But that rough image was cracked wide open last weekend when a group of bikers’ decided to show their softer, more compassionate side by giving gifts to children at a local public housing complex.

Hardcore bikers delight in giving kids their own set of wheels for Christmas. (EGP photo by Gloria Angelina Castillo)

They did it as part of S.W.A.T. on Patrol Ministries’ 3rd Annual Christmas Rolling Agenda at Ramona Gardens on Dec. 18. Hosted by World Faith Ministries (WFM), the holiday event included guest speakers, live performances, and a toy giveaway.

Forgoing his usual sled and reindeer for a motorcycle sidecar, Santa and his many helpers passed out shiny new bikes and other toys and goodies to the boys and girls of Ramona Gardens.

A small child smiles happily after receiving an unwrapped gift.

World Faith Ministries Evangelist Gabriel Garcia, himself a former a Ramona Gardens resident, emceed the holiday event that included live entertainment, as well as the gift giveaway.

Among the featured performers was 12-year-old Ryan Areyan, “Maxso the Artist,” who belted out some tunes for his young fans.

Santa’s biker friends lent a helping hand with donations and helping to run the event: God Side Ministry, Rolling Deep 4 Charities, CCHR Teamster Riders and Red Line Bikers. Other sponsors included city council candidate Rudy Martinez, the US Marines’ “Toys for Tots” program, Rancho Specialty Hospital, Williams & Sons Jewelry, and Starbucks.

Santa Claus was played by George Carrera.

Ramona Gardens kids on the “nice list” receive goodie-bag stockings from Santa, and be handed an unwrapped gift from a volunteer. (EGP photo by Gloria Angelina Castillo)

Last Saturday was a sad day for millions of young undocumented immigrants, their families and supporters, as the passage of the DREAM Act fell short in the Senate and backers were unable to overcome a bipartisan filibuster of the measure that would have given some young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

The final vote was 55 to 41 on Dec. 18, five short of the 60 needed to advance the bill for final debate in the Chamber.

The vote was widely viewed as the last best chance for some measure of immigration reform this year.

Heavily pushed by the Latino community and immigrant rights groups, passage was considered a long overdue down payment on Pres. Obama’s promise to act on immigration reform.

Much more restrictive than former versions of the bill, the DREAM Act would have given some young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, if they entered the US before age 16, had lived here for at least 5 years, graduated high school or received a GED and if they completed two years of college or two years in the military. The process, which included a number of fees, would take 10 years to complete.

Supporters of the measure said it is unfair to penalize young people who through no choice of their own entered the country illegally, and for the most part, know no other home than the US.

Opponents saw the DREAM Act as a step toward amnesty, and hailed its failure.

“With the DREAM Act and other amnesty proposals off the table, the [next] Congress will have an opportunity to implement immigration reforms that place the interests and concerns of the American people ahead of those of illegal aliens,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in a statement hours after the vote.

Locally, immigrant rights groups held viewing parties for the Senate, which they expected to come in the late afternoon; but the vote and crushing disappointment came hours earlier.

With emotions running high, a group of students and supporters marched in the rain from the CHIRLA office on 3rd Street to the UCLA Labor Center several blocks away in MacArthur Park.

There, students spoke out, comforted each other and allowed themselves to be interviewed by the many media outlets covering the breaking news.

Isaac Barrera was surrounded by DREAM Act students and supporters at a viewing party when he heard the vote. He is a Boyle Heights resident and Pasadena City College student.

“At first I didn’t know they were done [voting], I was still hopeful for it,” he said. “Everybody was like wow, there’s so much emotions running wild, everybody was all down, and crying there were tears everywhere.”

Barrera, 20, was in the first graduating class of the Ed Roybal Learning Center. He wants to become a professional photographer and plans to transfer to UCLA or Cal State Northridge.

While he barely remembers immigrating at the age of five, the painful memory of crossing the border illegally is still an open wound for his family.

He said his father came first, than sent for his mother and him and his brother. “Just like many of the kids here, their parents risked their whole life to come to this country, and then for politicians to play with us like this—all that struggle, all that sacrifices goes out the window.”

Barrera said people should know the tragedy of being denied the DREAM Act.

“All those politicians who probably have never met an undocumented person in their life. It’s real; it’s something that’s happening. It’s very real. I’m here and I’m undocumented. It’s real,” he said still processing the sad news.

Francisco Arias, a student at Los Angeles Valley College, was among the undocumented students who marched from CHIRLA’s office to the Labor Center. Arias said he felt a strong sense of unity marching with his peers.

“Together we are unafraid of the government and that’s the way it should be. In democracy the government has to be afraid of the people, not the people from the government. And they have to protect us and they have to embrace our future so we can give back to this country,” he told EGP.

Arias just earned his Associate’s Degree in Computer Science and hopes to transfer to UCLA. He was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the US at the age of 14. He thought the passing of Bush-era tax cuts had secured republican votes for the DREAM Act.

Arias said he feels deceived.

“[I don’t know] why they want to criminalize us, the ones who have chosen [education], a higher way to life. I think it’s unfair and we didn’t see justice today in the Senate, we saw corrupted interest,” he said.

Arias said “America failed this time” and the world was watching. “I hope they change their mind, hopefully soon,” he said.

Arias had hoped the DREAM Act would open the way for him to become documented, continue his education and become employed in order to finance his education.

“I could get a job doing something to pay for my education, to pay for a four-year university but they denied us that dream we had. But the battle is not over, right now. The battle is over when we accept the defeat and we haven’t accepted it yet, we’re going to keep fighting for 10, 20, 30 years because we fight for what is right,” he said.

He plans to apply for independent scholarships and find cash-paying jobs related to computer repair, he told EGP.

Erick Huerta, 26, a Boyle Heights resident and local blogger, was also at the UCLA Labor Center.

“I woke up to the vote, we were celebrating—sort of preemptive celebrating the night before—and I woke up around 8:30 and it was like five minutes before the no-vote. I was still kind of half asleep and hadn’t processed it but now it’s starting to hit me slowly,” he said.

Huerta is a journalism student at East Los Angeles College and a member of DREAM Team Los Angeles. He plans to transfer to Cal State Northridge or the University of Southern California.

While the DREAM Act’s failure was bad news, Huerta pointed out that while things are not getting any better, they’re not really getting worse either.

“It hasn’t changed anything. I’m still undocumented, I’m still going to finish school. I’m still going to do what I’ve always been doing except now it’s a little more depressing because I have to wait that much longer,” he said. “But if I have to wait much longer for the DREAM Act I’ll probably end up aging out because I’m already 26. That’s one of the possibilities.”

San Gabriel resident Sergio Salazar wore a cap and gown for the vote. He recently graduated with a double major in Political Science and International Studies from California Lutheran University; he previously attended Pasadena City College.

Salazar was born in Mexico but has been in the US since he was a year and half old. He considers himself an undocumented American.

“I do exist, this is my country, I’m an American,” he said. “I’m disappointed with what happened today with the Senate because I was hoping that the Senate was going to vote with their conscience. I’m an example of how the immigration system is broken. I actually went through the legal way to try to become documented.”

Salazar’s mother remarried and their immigration paperwork fell through when his step-father passed away, “so the DREAM Act was the only way that lawyers have told me that I can get legalized.”

He said he hid his legal status until recently when he felt compelled to join other undocumented students and ask for the DREAM Act to be passed.

“The way I see it is, if we get deported and we don’t tell our stories, it’s as if we never existed in the US. So I’d rather get deported while the world is watching. I’d rather get deported knowing that at least my story got told,” he said.

Salazar says he will continue to fight and will not “go down with my head down.”

“I’m going to continue to fight because I know that there are other undocumented students and other unknown Americans out there that are looking for someone to represent them and I feel that that has been my calling right now,” he said. “If they’re listening I just want them to not to be afraid because there is hope, maybe it’s not the hope that we want, but eventually we will achieve it.”

Commerce City Councilman Hugo Argumedo was forced to resign on Tuesday after pleading guilty to signing a false statement in a civil lawsuit.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Henry Barela also prohibited Argumedo from running for office during the next three years.

Argumedo pleaded to a misdemeanor count of obstruction of justice, while avoiding a felony count of perjury by declaration, said Deputy District Attorney Sandi Roth.

The D.A. filed the case against Argumedo on Dec. 14. He pleaded guilty to submitting a false affidavit that he had certified as true in a civil lawsuit between the City of Commerce and former city attorney Francisco Leal.

Leal filed the false affidavit signed by Argumedo to defend against allegations that he did not pay a settlement to the city after a contractual dispute.

Roth said Argumedo’s actions resulted in additional legal fees for the city and a “miscarriage of justice.”
A legal fight between the city and Leal led up to Argumedo filing his false affidavit, according to Roth. The dispute was over money each party felt it was owed.

In a 2006 lawsuit that he filed after he was let go by the city, former city attorney Leal claimed the city owed him money. The city countersued and was awarded a $70,000 settlement agreement.

A fight over the amount of that settlement was where Argumedo’s involvement leading up to his guilty plea came in, she said.

Leal refused to pay the $70,000, saying the council never saw, and never voted on, a $20,000 settlement amount he had initially offered. By this point the city was suing Leal for breaching the settlement agreement set at the $70,000 amount.

Meanwhile, Argumedo had signed an affidavit backing Leal’s claim that the council never voted on Leal’s $20,000 offer. But D.A. prosecutors said the city council did vote on and ultimately rejected the $20,000 settlement amount. The vote was made in closed session, but there are minutes and a paper trail, Roth said.

The D.A. began looking into the case after a complaint was filed in 2008. Roth believes Argumedo had complete knowledge of what he was doing when he signed the false affidavit.

An early admission of wrongdoing by Argumedo, and his agreement to resign from the city council and not run for office for three years, mitigated his situation down from a felony to a misdemeanor, she said.

Argumedo left the dais on Tuesday after announcing his resignation. (EGP photo by Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou)

Argumedo made his official exit at the beginning of Tuesday night’s regular council meeting, the last one scheduled for the year. But before discussing the one “regret” he had about his time on council, he enumerated “accomplishments” that he presided over since getting elected to the council for the first time in 1996, including the opening of the Crown Plaza Hotel, the purchase of the Citadel Outlet stores, creation of the Education Commission, and the restructuring of the Commerce Scholarship Program.

After this lengthy set-up in which he described some of his accomplishments as being initially seen as “controversial,” Argumedo finally turned his focus to explaining what led up to filing the false affidavit.

He said he signed the affidavit supporting Leal’s $20,000 settlement amount because he felt the city had not honored its agreement.

He was given a chance to withdraw his affidavit, as did former Councilwoman Rosalina Lopez, who had also signed an affidavit supporting Leal’s claim, but was put off by the “intimidating” manner of their city attorney, Eduardo Olivo.

“I felt he was literally telling Rosalina, I recall him vividly telling her, you are going to lose your house, you are going to be arrested. In retrospect, maybe the statements were correct,” he said.

Argumedo said he “could not trust Mr. Olivo’s advice at the time due to him having been involved in the plotting and planning of the illegal takeover of the city of Vernon.”

Still he admitted that “it was a mistake” on his part to sign the false affidavit, but right before leaving the dais, Argumedo said he was doing so “reluctantly.”

Argumedo’s resignation speech angered Mayor Tina Baca Del Rio, who felt there was no need to blame their city attorney. “If indeed you are found guilty of something, then you take that judgment, you take that as a man,” she said.

They gave Argumedo the opportunity to retract his affidavit, she said, adding that there was no “intimidation” on the part of Olivo. “We’re all big girls and big boys,” she said.

Baca Del Rio said Argumedo’s support of Leal was counter to the interest of the community. “Hugo chose to take sides with Francisco Leal. We couldn’t understand why a councilmember would do such a thing, being that this man [Leal] took the money that belonged to the people of this community,” she said.

Argumedo’s city council seat is up in March, but he had not filed to run again. Commerce spokesperson Brian Wolfson said the city has the option of appointing or electing someone to finish the term, or leaving the spot open until the next election, which is in March.

Six other council members have resigned from office since the city’s incorporation in 1960. The last people to resign from Commerce City Council were Ricardo Vasquez and Robert Eula in 1984. Both had been found guilty of soliciting and accepting bribes. They pleaded no contest to the federal charges against them.

The County Board of Supervisors approved a comprehensive traffic study of an East Los Angeles neighborhood near the Union Pacific Rail Yard on Dec. 14.

But a week after the Board’s decision to request another study, public works officials who say they’ve already conducted a comprehensive study are scratching their heads.

“That’s something we need to work with the [First] District on, as to exactly what they’re ordering us to do,” County Traffic Investigator James Chon told EGP on Tuesday.

The new “comprehensive” study was proposed by Supervisor Gloria Molina after residents and other stakeholders in the community failed to get desired traffic safety measures approved through the normal channels.

But Chon said they are trying to get more clarification from Molina’s office. “For us to see a motion to do another study kind of baffles us a little bit,” he said.

The motion, which did not give a deadline for the study, states that “community input” should be included in the process, and that the analysis process should be handled by the County Public Works Department.

Molina’s motion asserts “there clearly are traffic problems that must be addressed” in the Union Pacific Neighborhood, even though the County’s Public Works department and the Highway Safety Commission have rejected the resident’s requests to install traffic control measures.

The County has made a “significant investment” into the residential aspect of the community, which consists of a heavy industrial and trucking area located right next to single-family homes and schools. The County has built a new park and opened two new childcare and community centers in the area, the motion reads, but conflicting land uses “present unique challenges in planning for pedestrian and traffic safety.”

Chon said the traffic commission and the public works department have a very technical focus and is set up to look at existing conditions. A planning-focused agency may be better equipped to address the vision and future goals of a community, he said.

Molina’s motion sets the new study apart from past studies by suggesting the traffic commission look at “nontraditional” methods of getting speed and traffic volume down to “acceptable levels.”

Chon admitted they have not looked at “nontraditional” methods for traffic calming, but he maintained that a “planning type” approach, involving the Community Development Commission or even the Regional Planning Commission would be more up to the task.

The Community Development Commission “may be able to see things we may not,” he said, which is why he feels it would be “healthy to contact them.”

At the Highway Safety Commission meeting, Guillermo Villalobos, one of the commissioners who directly represents the Union Pacific neighborhood, “recommended doing more of a planning type of study, rather than an operational type of study, which is the type of study we usually conduct,” Chon said.

Those commissions as well as the County Board of Supervisors would be able to “look at the technical [traffic] report, and based on those studies, they may make their own decision with respect to what is best for the community,” he said.

Though not stated in the motion, a spokesperson for Molina said the new study would focus on a “multi-modal” type of study, which assesses traffic needs of a neighborhood based not just on automobiles, but also buses, bicycles and pedestrian.

But Chon said this was the approach they had already recommended to the original applicants of the traffic measures.

In a letter dated Dec. 6 to East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, the Traffic and Lighting Division director recommended a relatively new method for assessing traffic needs described in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 616. The letter also referred the applicants to the manager of the Community Development Commission.

But Molina’s office said there is no need to go to the County’s planning agencies. Keeping the study in the Public Works Department, hiring a consultant to guide the project, and looking at non-traditional traffic calming methods is “worth a shot,” her spokesperson said.

The traffic engineers could always study the options “in even greater detail,” she said. “It is important to our office to exhaust everything. We need to know for certain,” she said.

Chon said if that’s the case, they might end up having to look into hiring a consultant to help them.